I love the way precision gives way to excessive generality in this description of the Barcelona days of Lionel Messi.

There’s the touch, the ball treated gently. The vision, seeing the pass no one else can. Playing the pass everyone else can, but doing it so well it can’t be stopped. The way he doesn’t so much kick the ball as watch it dash alongside him like a faithful, enthusiastic puppy. Everything really.

It’s as if the writer, trying to wrestle Messi into mere specificity, finally gives up. Messi’s greatness, they assert, was Blakean: eternity seen in a grain of sand, heaven in a wildflower. I should add that the pacing of the passage is lovely, too, as the form follows the function, as the great player is both described and embodied.

Source: The Guardian.